One theme that runs through
David Chase’s The Sopranos and now former Sopranos writer
Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men is the inability of human beings to
really change. Epiphanies and therapy are mirages that function to trick
us out of our ruts for a moment or two, but like a magnet in the middle
of iron filings, all people are attracted back to those modes of behavior
that are easier to inhabit. Tony
Soprano and Don Draper may honestly desire to be different people, but
metamorphosis requires effort and true introspection. In other words,
real change is hard; humans are lazy and self-deluded. And episode after
episode of these shows hammers home this worldview bleakly, an
exhausting doctrine that gets by on the strength of the acting and
writing.

Thematically, Big Fan is
an exploration of the same trope, though coming from the other end of
the power spectrum. Where Soprano and Draper are powerful people who—at
least partly—desire to wield their power less brutally, Paul Aufiero
(Patton Oswalt) is a nobody, whose chance to change for the better is
decimated by his obsession. An almost middle-aged parking lot tollbooth
operator, Aufiero lives with his mother on Staten Island and spends every waking moment
obsessed with the Giants football team. His routine is the same—go to
work, write out faux-extemporaneous comments to the local sports
call-in show, go home, call in for his moment of recognition, masturbate
quietly, and then sleep. On Sundays, he tailgates and watches the game
on a small TV because he and his friend Sal (Kevin Corrigan) can’t
afford tickets.

This endless banality is
interrupted by a brutal beating, which Aufiero receives at the hands of
his hero, Giants’ quarterback Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm). This
incident breaks him out of his reverie for a moment and offers Aufiero a
glimpse of his dreary existence. This chaotic moment gives him the
impetus to change. However, these moments are fleeting, and when not
grasped with sufficient gusto, dissipate into the air. Just under the
conscious surface, Aufiero, like many protagonists in the same
situation, wants to be different, but beyond the inertia and apathy
holding him back, he is ill-equipped to truly take the steps required to
become something else. He is an existential child; he doesn’t possess the tools to
think about himself or his life in any meaningful way and therefore
doesn't understand his dilemma for what it really is.

The philosopher Simone de
Beauvoir has a wonderful term for this kind of person: the serious man.
The serious man flees from his ability to make choices, to take
responsibility for his existence, and in doing so, he places his
subjectivity in some object or cause outside himself: “He loses himself
in the object in order to annihilate his subjectivity.” For Aufiero, the
Giants are the thing in which he invests his being, and in doing so,
raises them to the level of idol. When Bishop proves himself to be no
more than a thug, it’s not just that Aufiero sees his hero as human,
fallible, and cruel, but rather that it reveals Aufiero to himself.

While this may only be debut director Robert Siegel's
second script to be filmed (he also wrote The Wrestler), it's
obvious that he finds something compelling about these kinds of
characters, as Aufiero and Randy
“The Ram” Robinson are both serious
men. The viewer is at the ground level with Aufiero, and much like the
small, personal films that populated the 1970s, this makes the audience
that much more sympathetic towards Oswalt.
Andy BeckermanAugust 24, 2009